Cantor: Obama 'misses the mark'

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is heading into a lunch meeting with fellow Republicans and President Barack Obama Wednesday angry at Obama’s recent speech before the Chamber of Commerce — a visit that was otherwise praised by Republicans as strategic outreach to the business community.

The second-ranking Republican, who has a chilly relationship with the president already, said he took Obama’s message to the Chamber to be “a sense that somehow business in America needs to respond and act in a way that is somehow grateful for Washington’s acts.”

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“This sort of quid pro quo, that if Washington acts to whatever it is the president is proposing — whether it’s reducing the corporate rates or whether it’s passing trade bills — that somehow business owes it to the country to do x, y, z, I think that misses the mark,” Cantor said of Obama’s speech. “Washington doesn’t just wave a magic wand and necessarily business creates jobs. That’s not how it works.”

The remarks seem to be in response to Obama’s call on business to invest in growing their businesses, instead of sitting on piles of cash.

Cantor said that businesses are “looking to Washington to see what’s next” instead of creating an environment “where you allow for an entrepreneurial risk-based investment.”

House Republicans’ relationship with the president hasn’t been friendly over the past several years. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Cantor and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) led the charge against Obama’s agenda. Cantor on Tuesday said the November elections were a referendum on Obama, not a vote of confidence in the GOP.

The president has had little contact with House Republican leadership since the mid-term elections. He’s made a few phone calls, and he held one in-person meeting with Congressional leaders, but the lunch Wednesday will certainly be the most intimate affair thus far.

Michael Steel, a Boehner spokesman, said “the Speaker is pleased to have an opportunity to speak with the President about our plans to reduce economic uncertainly and create jobs by cutting spending and breaking down barriers to private sector investment.”

Erica Elliott, a spokesman for McCarthy, said the Californian “looks forward to a candid discussion with President Obama about the ways in which House Republicans and the White House can work together to remove government barriers to private sector job growth.”